Louise Macallister

Email:

College: College of Life and Environmental Sciences

I completed my undergraduate degree with The University of Exeter from 2007 - 2010. I graduated with a BA Human Geography, with first class honours, and won the Jonathan Ratnage prize for the best dissertation. My dissertation was entitled 'Living the Fat Life: Beyond shock on pro-obesity websites' and used virtual ethnography to explore changing perceptions of bodies, fat activism, and the capacities of fat.

I then studied the MRes in Critical Human Geographies at Exeter. My Masters dissertation, 'Containing Fat Bodies: discursive constructions of bodily boundaries in Victorian health manuals', considered how certain bodies are constructed as risky, and that this is linked to wider social discourses, including that of national citizenship.

I have now been awarded ESRC funding through the South West Doctoral Training Centre to undertake my PhD at The University of Exeter. My thesis explores themes of risk, responsibility and knowledge through a focus on parenting in light of contemporary anti-obesity discourses.